In light of the recent UN IPCC Himalayan Glaciergate, the Mother Nature Network (MNN) has rushed out some spin claiming glaciers are indeed melting, we caused it, and it is “very scary“. MNN has also put together a photo montage of the “Top 7 disappearing glaciers“, along with alarming commentary.

As the list starts with #7 (The Matterhorn) and ends with #1 (Glacier National Monument), the first image a reader sees are these starkly different photos of the Matterhorn:

c. 1960 & today, Getty Images

The photo caption is by MNN. The message that they are trying to obviously convey here is that circa 1960 the Matterhorn was covered with snow, ice, and glaciers, that it was very, very cold, and that today it’s much warmer which has caused all that frozen stuff to melt.

So I asked myself, “Self, have the Matterhorn glaciers really melted that much since 1960 as the photos depict?” Although I’d love to take a trip to The Alps to check it out for myself, I decided a more efficient way to find out quickly would be to visit the image sharing site, Flickr.com, and see from photos that others have uploaded what they discovered on their own. Here’s a couple of relatively recent photos that indeed show a dramatic difference in the amount of white frozen stuff on the Matterhorn:

Photo taken July 15, 2006 by richardcjones & licensed by Creative Commons

Photo taken January 12, 2010 by AndiH & licensed by Creative Commons

I suppose an opportunist could conclude from photos that I found on Flickr that the the amount of snow, ice and glaciers on the Matterhorn have actually grown significantly from 2006 to today, but a realist recognizes that this is not necessarily the case, and that a better explanation would be that the photo showing little snow was shot during the summer, and the other showing a blanket of snow was shot during the winter. Regarding the MNN photos presented, no mention is made of what season each photo was shot ,and it’s doubtful that they even want us to consider such inconvenient thoughts. To the contrary, MNN expects readers to just swallow their photos whole, be scared, and do so without asking any pesky questions.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Via Flickr, I did find one photo taken during the winter that shows very little, snow, ice, or glaciers on the Matterhorn, and in which you can even see a waterfall formed by the melting glaciers:

Photo taken January 11,2007 by DTrigger05 & licensed by Creative Commons

But seriously, MNN’s photos supposedly depicting melting glaciers on the Matterhorn proves nothing in their effort to debunk Glaciergate – they’ve only proven that any schmuck can cherry-pick photos.

National Geographic magazine did something like this last year. My memory is hazy on the details, but they did provide the dates of the before/after pictures and made it sounds like a huge deal related to global climate change, but in fact, it was the normal amount of melting that occurs over the summer.

You bring up a good point. I’m sure there are countless examples of this type of crap “science.

Due to time constraints I only did the comparison on the Matterhorn because that one was the first one presented by MNN. They presented six other “disappearing glaciers” in the same article, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if the other “disappearing glaciers” are being misrepresented just as the Matterhorn was being misrepresented in the article.

If any readers are interested in doing some research to find out, be my guest!

Same balooney for the Helheim glacier. They only show the picture for 2005, a year of exceptionnal retreat, and “forget” the inconvenient truth that the glacier has strongly advanced the following years.
Lies, lies and lies.

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Al Gore’s Modus Operandi

Al Gore: "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are...."
Grist Magazine (May 9, 2006)